Grad Profiles highlight the personal and professional stories of Founder Institute Graduates from across the globe.
This profile on I-DISPO, a Graduate of the Paris Founder Institute, was written by Emma Tzeng. Co-Founded in 2011 by Ismaël Nzouetom, I-DISPO is the largest community for sharing and booking appointments online.
The Paris Founder Institute is now accepting applications to their Summer 2012 Semester. The Final Application Deadline is Sunday, April 8th. If you could benefit from expert training and feedback to launch a technology company, apply today.
It’s 2:30 in the morning and you’re tossing and turning in bed, clawing and scratching your itchy body. A rash has started to form across your arms as you mentally replay the events of that evening, trying to pinpoint the culprit of your allergy-like symptoms.
Unable to bear it any longer, it dawns on you suddenly to book an appointment with a local dermatologist. You stumble out of bed and onto your computer to do a quick Google search. With some difficulty, you locate the numbers for three different specialists in your area, then spend the next few minutes groping in the dark for your phone. Half-asleep and still scratching away at your irritated skin, you dial the first dermatologist.
No answer.
You realize then that all your searching must come to its futile end. No one is on call at such an obscure hour of the night; and you have no choice but to call back at 9:00 when offices reopen for business.
There are two glaringly incongruous facts about this situation, and Paris-based startup I-DISPO has taken it upon itself to offer up scalable solutions to both.
First off, booking an appointment shouldn’t be so complicated. Over 70% of today’s consumers use the Internet to search for local business directory information, amassing over 10 billion unique online searches every month. Yet, after these consumers access an organization’s contact information, in over 90 percent of the cases they are typically prompted to manually dial the business’s number and phone in a reservation request.
I-DISPO wants to streamline that process by omitting the phone call altogether.
Instead, I-DISPO users can click a “Reserve” button next to businesses’ online contact information which directs them to a page where they can choose the most suitable appointment time. Business owners will then confirm customers’ appointments through SMS, emails, or phone calls.
Second of all, companies should be able to capture business opportunities 24/7. With I-DISPO’s product, business owners can continue to accept appointment requests even after normal business hours.
In this way, both parties win: consumers can book appointments with ease and businesses increase efficiency. To top it all off, web publishers also get to reap the benefits, for I-DISPO also offers an organized, centralized system to track business.
Launched in April 2011 by a team of five, including CEO Ismaël Nzouetom, I-DISPO initiated partnerships with 1,000 restaurants in Paris and agreements with Microsoft Bing and OpenTable. Just months later, by November of that year, the startup had successfully connected with three million local businesses, 40 web publishers, and ten million customers.
Today, I-DISPO has expanded to the U.S. and partnered with 14 million local businesses. It plans to roll out services to 20 more countries in the near future.
Furthermore, I-DISPO caters to business owners by using the third-party service that works best for the merchant and transmitting all customer requests through that platform. In this way, I-DISPO “partners” with potential competitors and generates even more business by making it seamless and easy for new users to start using the service.
The startup generates revenue by providing opportunities for local businesses to become sponsors. As a sponsor, organizations pay advertising fees to ensure that their company shows up at the top of the search results page as a recommended business.
As the Internet continues to become an integral platform in discovering new, local companies, I-DISPO is set to spearhead the movement by bridging the disconnect between finding and contacting businesses.
Check out their pitch below from the 8th Founder Showcase, where they came in a close second place as the Runner-Up:
To learn more about I-DISPO:
